The next step for Grain Belt Beer sign

The owner of the Grain Belt Beer sign had to turn down a $10,000 anti-graffiti grant, but he’s upbeat that the downtown Minneapolis billboard will reclaim its glory.

On April 17, Whistleblower reported how Winthrop Eastman, whose family trust owns the sign, was irked that the city was saddling him with graffiti removal fees when that money could be used to restore the sign. Last week, Eastman said he turned down a city grant to graffiti-proof the billboard for lack of matching funds.

“The good news is that the Preservation Alliance is moving very aggressively toward restoration funding of the sign,” Eastman said Friday.

He might reapply for the anti-graffiti grant to reimburse the preservation group for making the billboard hostile to taggers.

A Baltimore couple and their company were ordered to pay back $616,000 to Spanish-speaking immigrants for immigration services that they were neither qualified nor authorized to provide, the Federal Trade Commission announced last week.

CenterPoint agreed last week to pay at least $192,500 to settle a lawsuit filed by the City of Minneapolis and various insurance companies after a gas explosion near a south Minneapolis Cub Foods in 2011.